


my ally is the force (and a powerful ally it is)

by aceofdiamonds



Category: That '70s Show
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-07
Updated: 2016-01-07
Packaged: 2018-05-12 12:00:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5665339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aceofdiamonds/pseuds/aceofdiamonds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>eric's reaction to the rest of the star wars movies</p><p>He’s twenty now, somewhat grown-up, somewhere closer to knowing what he’s doing with his life, but he’s seventeen again in the cinema, head tilted back and eyes wide as he watches Luke learn his destiny and lose his hand to his father, a revelation that makes Eric gasp along with the rest of the audience, everyone here as enthralled as he is, everyone wanting to know what came next for Luke and Leia and Han.</p>
            </blockquote>





	my ally is the force (and a powerful ally it is)

**Author's Note:**

> because i’ve recently fallen into star wars and as i’ve watched all the films i’ve been wondering how #1 Luke Fan eric forman would react to the rest of the series, including the prequels and the new sequel. i haven’t seen attack of the clones yet or most of the phantom menace tbh so those parts are taken from wikipedia. includes spoilers throughout the series, including the new one!

 

 

 _iv: a new hope_  

Eric hadn’t been that interested in the talk about the new movie that had been blowing everyone’s mind, the one with galaxies and wars and princesses of planets far far away, but now that he’s sitting in the cinema seeing everything for himself, he gets the hype, and he falls in love.

He sits in the cinema, ignoring Kelso’s too-loud laughs and Hyde’s snide comments on either side of him, and he watches Luke Skywalker leave his tiny home and save the galaxy.

“Think Red would let me get a lightsaber?” he asks Hyde, Kelso and Fez as they leave the cinema and pile into the Vista Cruiser. “Think he would let me get a green one? Oh man, did you see when Luke and Han fought the --” he trails off, jumps to the next part, “and when _Obi-Wan_ _died_ , I mean, do you think --?”

At first they’re just as into it as him, all up for discussing the hotness of Leia and the coolness of Han, but then after a few days Hyde says, “Shut up, Forman,” and that’s basically how it goes every time he mentions Star Wars for the next three years, which is unfair because Star Wars is _amazing_.

 

 _v: the empire strikes back_  

Being in Africa for a year and none of his friends or family feeling the need to tell him the biggest news of the year means that Eric only finds out about the sequel a couple of months before it’s released.

He’s twenty now, somewhat grown-up, somewhere closer to knowing what he’s doing with his life, but he’s seventeen again in the cinema, head tilted back and eyes wide as he watches Luke learn his destiny and lose his hand to his father, a revelation that makes Eric gasp along with the rest of the audience, everyone here as enthralled as he is, everyone wanting to know what came next for Luke and Leia and Han. He came by himself this time but he doesn’t feel alone.

“Darth Vader is Luke’s father?” He demands an explanation for this for the next week and a half until even his mother is threatening to put a foot up his ass. “Darth Vader is Luke’s _father_?” he says again, sloping off to his room to avoid Red’s glare and pulling down his Luke action figures dusty with disuse and neglect while he's been away. “And you didn't even get the girl,” he tells Luke, bending his arm in a salute, imagining the cut-off hand at the end.

He talks like Yoda for as long as he can, slipping reconstructed sentences and beads of wisdom into whatever conversation he can. It's harder now, he's an adult, there are bigger consequences to ‘talking like a dumbass’ than just the threat of some bodily harm. Luckily, though, for Eric, the entire country’s been swept up in the hysteria -- the kids in his class love it when he slips into Yoda and then out again and into Threepio. It’s childish and fun and Eric loves that he can bring what he loves into his job.

 

_vi: return of the jedi_

 Three years later, Donna comes with him to see the Return of the Jedi, all rolling eyes and semi-patronising smiles as they settle into the crowded theatre. They’re not back together, it doesn’t seem likely that they ever will be, and that’s fine, it is, because they’re friends, the way they started out all those years ago.

Hey, Luke thought he was supposed to end up with Leia and look how that turned out. Although, as fine as he might be with everything, Eric’s not sure if he’ll be as supportive of Donna when she finds her Han Solo as Luke was. That comparison doesn’t follow through completely, however, considering Donna isn’t his twin sister and therefore he isn’t limited by incest the way his hero was. But he enjoys the ability to sympathise with his hero.

But Donna comes with him and she eats her popcorn and doesn’t ask too many questions which Eric is thankful for because he’s twenty-three now but he’s just as in love with it all as ever. And then Donna whisper-yells at both him and the man on her other side when their mouths fall open in awe at Leia in the gold bikini, sprawled along Jabba the Hut’s side. “She's _enslaved_ , Eric, and you and every other man here are objectifying her the way that slug is.”

She leaves after that, muttering about men and feminism, which is a shame because she misses when Leia strangles Jabba ten minutes later and the cheer it gets in the cinema.

(Later, in his bed, he gets off to a sweaty, angry, Leia in that tiny gold bikini, shame pulsing through him immediately after when Donna’s reprimand slams into his brain, but fuck, he's twenty three and he's in love, give him a break.)

It ends with a death and a celebration and Eric walks out of the theatre into the bright afternoon and wonders what he’ll do now that he can’t wonder how Luke Skywalker is doing.

He has his own place now but the next time he visits his parents he rummages through the boxes of his old stuff until he finds his lightsaber, whirling it around his head when Red’s back is turned.

 

_i: the phantom menace_

He’s thirty nine; he has a wife and two kids; it’s almost a new millennium. So much has changed since the last time, but still, when he hears of a new addition to the series he feels that familiar bubble of excitement rise up within his chest like it’s always been waiting for the time when he gets to go back and learn some more.

It’s different from the others in that there is no Luke, no Darth Vader, and everyone is back to the beginning, learning the story of their villain. They see a younger Obi-Wan Kenobi and a child called Anakin Skywalker who has no idea of the path he will blaze across the galaxy. Eric leans back in his seat and feels his age as he follows the beginning of his favourite franchise, his favourite hero, but by the end he’s leaning forward, eager all over again to find out more.

“When we get home can we watch the other ones?” his daughter asks when they come out blinking into the sunlight, swinging her hand in his, fingers sticky with candyfloss and mouth wide in a smile.

Eric hasn’t watched the original trilogy in a long long time. It moved to the back of his mind and stayed there while other things came and went, while he got married, had children, grew in his career. To open that box now to share with his children is a gift he never considered asking for and now he squeezes his daughter’s hand and tells her, “Sure,” and then he turns to his son to bring him into the conversation, gently steering him away from the edge of the pavement away from traffic. “Wait till you see Luke -- when I was younger I wanted to grow up to be just like him.”

He’s a teacher and a father and someone who still says the wrong thing a lot of the time; he and Luke aren’t very similar at all but sometimes Eric still likes to pretend.

 

_ii: attack of the clones_

The great thing about Star Wars is that so many people are still interested, so many people are still wanting to know what happens next, what happened before, what’s happening _now_ \-- so many people are throwing themselves into the franchise. It helps Eric justify himself when he’s forty two and practically bouncing off the sofa as he waits for Kate to get her jacket. It’s just the two of them this time; the children found better people to go with than their parents.

“Are they ever going to stop making these?” Kate asks as they stand in the line that stretches around outside the building.

“Never,” Eric says, laughing.

“Oh, don’t say that,” his wife replies, tugging him forward a few steps more. “Or we’ll be coming here when we’re ninety.”

And that makes him stop. “Hey,” he says, hand catching her elbow. It’s warm out, May in Washington may be wetter than most states but it’s just as hot as the rest of them come summer. His fingers rub over a scar from overly-vigorous playing with the kids years ago. “Kate, thanks for coming with me.”

Kate shrugs, smiling. “It makes you happy,” she says, like that’s enough.

When they finally get into the theatre, everyone tilting their necks up to the air conditioning, Eric sits down with his wife by his side and watches the yellow writing scroll across the screen, a welcome return after another three years, another wait. Anakin falls in love, he is humanised, and then he's pulled to the dark side, and there are so many hints here towards the original trilogy that Eric is talking about it for days afterwards. 

 

_iii: revenge of the sith_

When it ends with the destruction of Anakin Skywalker, the birth of Darth Vader, Eric sighs loudly, waving away his daughter’s flash of concern. He watches the death of Padmé Amidala and the birth of the future heroes with a heavy heart and he is almost glad when it’s over, no more wondering about this or that, about Obi-Wan or Chewbacca or Han Solo.

It feels absurd to be this caught up in a false world, a false galaxy, for this long, but it’s not like that. What it’s been is akin to meeting an old friend for drinks every few years, catching up for a couple of hours, before you split up, making plans to meet again in the future. Eric laughs in the car on the way home when he tries to match up the friend in question from the ones he made in Point Place. Maybe Donna, who was always around, or Hyde who always brought excitement, or hell, even Jackie, who has mellowed over the years and always asks how Red and Kitty are, who stood in the second row for Red’s funeral a couple of years ago. If he thinks about it much more he'll decide it's a mix of all of them.

“Shall we go for dinner?” his daughter asks, flipping down the mirror above her head to check her lipstick.

“Sure, Mexican?”

And she nods and Eric takes the next left and when he gets home he tells Kate what happened to Anakin and Obi-Wan and Padmé and that’s it. 

 

_vii: the force awakens_

“You’re joking,” Hyde says, voice flat.

Eric shifts the phone to his other ear as he moves a pile of marked tests to make room for the stack of unmarked ones his assistant has just dumped on his desk. “I’m not, Hyde, not even a little.”

“When’s Star Wars going to fucking die?” Hyde groans, and it’s incredible how he sounds exactly the same as he did when he was eighteen. “What --?” the sound is muffled for a moment and Eric focuses on reading the first answer on the top test before Hyde comes back. “Jackie says she wants to see it -- something about seeing how the gross guy aged.”

“Han Solo?” There are rumours that the old cast is coming back, all thirty years older than the first one, all wanting to continue the story they started. Eric’s not heard anything of Mark Hamill’s involvement yet -- he’s trying not to get his hopes up. He ticks a couple of answers before the idea hits him. “Hey, Hyde, know what we should do?”

“No.”

“C’mon, man, hear me out --”

“It was good when we were seventeen, Forman,” Hyde tells him and here Eric can hear a shift as he talks to Jackie again. “I can’t believe the two of you,” he says, and that’s him sold.

When circumstances slowly pulled them apart and away from Point Place when they were younger they made promises to keep in touch. They haven’t kept to that exactly; weeks can go by before Eric thinks to call Kelso or Donna thinks to email Jackie. It’s not something Eric worries over much -- they were a gang who had fallen together in a basement in a tiny town and as the world had expanded around them they had each reached out and grabbed a piece.

But the six of them make their way back to Point Place, Wisconsin, for a reunion that puts all of them in the same room together for at least ten years, maybe more, Eric hasn’t been counting. He’s seen them all individually, or, in Jackie and Hyde’s case, as a couple, more frequently, but this is the first time they’ve all been together, and it’s funny, ridiculous, and a little bit incredible that it’s a Star Wars film that pulls them back to where they started.

“I’ve missed you guys,” Fez says when Kelso finally arrives and they’re all standing around Donna’s parents’ living room. With Eric’s mom in Florida and everyone else’s parents dead or gone their meeting place is several feet from the basement, the closest they’re going to get.

Jackie opens her mouth to say something but then closes it again, instead leaning into Hyde’s side. It’s a gesture that takes Eric violently back to his teenage years, the sight almost as familiar as Donna rolling her eyes and smiling, the way she is now when she says she missed them all too.

“Yeah, yeah,’ Eric replies, waving his hand. “This is great, I couldn’t live without you, but let’s go. We’re going to be late.”

“Hey, Hyde,” Kelso nudges him as they split up and take two cars, the men in Eric’s, the women in Donna’s. “Think Leia’ll still be smokin’ hot?”

And Hyde leans back from where he’s sitting in the passenger seat and punches him on the arm as he says, “Haven’t you seen her, man? She’s old now.”

“Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t do her,” Kelso argues. “I’m getting on a bit too, you know, although it’s hard to tell cause I’m such a silver fox.”

“You’ve certainly kept your good looks,” Fez agrees, but he doesn’t look too bad himself.

It’s incredible, how little has changed. Eric is older now, his hair is greying a little, his muscles get sore, he has lines around his mouth and his eyes, but it doesn’t feel so different when they pull up at the cinema and line up for tickets, that small ball of excitement churning up inside of him.

The music builds and builds as the title appears and Eric is fifty five old and maybe he should be over it by now but when he glances to his side he catches Hyde grinning and he turns back, smile so big his cheeks hurt.

He can hear Jackie muttering comments to Donna most of the way through and Fez and Kelso keep laughing at bits that aren’t meant to be funny but Eric ignores them all and sits in awe that he can still be so in love after all this time. When Han Solo and Chewbacca appear his chest _twists_ and he’s seventeen again with the woman beside him all he wants and his best friends all he needs and then _and then_ when Luke appears, older and greyer and looking so painfully like he’s gone through the world in a way that Eric can relate to, he sucks in a breath and doesn’t let go until Rey and Luke fade and the credits roll.

“That was amazing,” he babbles as they step out into the street.

All around them people are having the same conversation; Eric can hear them discussing Rey and Finn and Poe, how great Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford looked, how shocking it was when Han Solo was murdered, and wasn’t it nice to see C3PO and R2-D2 again although that new little one, BB-8, was so cute.

There are people here Eric’s age or older, there are some his son’s age, some his daughter’s, and many are little kids, faces lit up with the same excitement Eric has carried for this franchise since he was seventeen.

“It was good,” Donna admits. “Rey was badass.”

"I wouldn't kick Luke out of bed," Jackie adds, laughing when Hyde nudges her in the side and complains that she didn't like the beard when he had it. "Save the galaxy, Steven," is all she replies. 

As Eric drives them back to Donna's he goes over the movie in his head, tries to remember every exact detail. He makes comparisons with the old movies and the subtle hints towards the prequels and he remembers the feeling that had swelled up inside of him when Luke had finally appeared. So he's old; so's Luke Skywalker, and to have grown up with his heroes, to be given even more opportunities to know them, is something that seventeen year old Eric could never have predicted when he gave into the hype and went to the cinema in 1977 to see the new movie everyone was talking about. He won't go as far as to say it's shaped his life but it's been pretty damn comforting and it's provided him with a hell of a lot of happiness and that's all more than enough.   
  



End file.
